The overall inclusion of sensitive information within user files has increased in recent years due to the expanding connectivity and interoperability between computing devices (e.g., via cloud-based storage solutions). Concern over the security of such sensitive information has led to the implementation of traditional authentication and encryption techniques. Although these traditional techniques generally help reduce unauthorized access to privileged information, they are also characterized as being inflexible and burdensome to use, especially in view of the ever-increasing number of user files found on present-day computing devices. For example, it can be inconvenient for a user to change password protection for a large number of files as conventional techniques do not enable for global password protection changes across the files. Consequently, stale authentication information can increase the likelihood of privacy breaches.